“Common sense” should rule on guns

What makes Barack Obama competent to discuss, much less determine, national gun policy?

He’s never taken even a basic gun safety course. He’s never fired a handgun, and couldn’t tell you the difference between a pistol and a revolver. He’s never fired a rifle, and he’d be completely unable to explain why a rifle with a 15.75″ barrel is heavily-regulated and taxed, while the same exact same rifle with a barrel .25″ longer is sold at Walmart after a NICS background check. He couldn’t explain why the semi-automatic Ruger 10/22 is an “assault weapon” with one kind of stock on it, but is just another innocent hunting rifle if it uses another.

For that matter, if you gave Obama a pop quiz and asked him to explain what a barrel shroud, bayonet lug, flash suppressor, or pistol grip were, and why they made one gun more dangerous than another, all he could give you was a dumb look, followed by a sputtered attempt to change the subject.

The simple fact of the matter is that Barack Obama is completely ignorant about firearms, and if you gave him one, he’ d hold it awkwardly, looking quite stupid, and probably point it at half the people in the room before it was snatched out his hands as a threat to public safety.

The same holds true for Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Carolyn McCarthy, Dianne Feinstein, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the vast majority of politicians attempting to destroy a part of the Constitution they fear in their ignorance.

You can say the same for the “experts” commissioned by Vice President Biden’s task force, selected from anti-gun organizations that are experts in fear and phobias, but who know next to nothing about how guns work, and could not load one safely or fire it accurately if their lives depended on it.

The same applies to media pundits, who attempt to affect a false air of confidence that merely covers up their incompetence.

Do you think that David Gregory, Bill O’Reilly, Paul Krugman, or other opinionated blowhards have the first bit of training, experience, or knowledge about firearms? Of course not.

The only significant news figure that has acquired a decent working knowledge of how firearms work is Emily Miller of the Washington Times. The result of Miller’s path through firearms education? She stands diametrically opposed to her ignorant gun-grabbing peers.

Barack Obama and his allies want “common sense” to rule on guns. I completely agree.

It is “common sense” to ignore the recommendations of people who are superstitious, factually ignorant, politically-motivated, and poorly educated.

It is “common sense” to engage with real experts, credentialed in their area of expertise, when important matters are before the nation.

It is “common sense” that politicians be held accountable for their assaults on the Constitution.

By all means, lets introduce “common sense” to the debate over firearms. It’s the last thing that anti-gun politicians, media figures, and activists really want.

If the elite’s goal is to stigmatize firearm ownership, as is obvious, then even inaccuracies are still useful. A factual inaccuracy about a technical matter — which elicits contempt among knowledgable gun owners — gets lost amid the tone of the media reports, as received by ordinary (“low information”) people.

The media doesn’t set out to make public mistakes, but if they can cow enough people by broadcasting “gun-hate” at top volume — well, that’s good enough for their purposes.

Inaccuracies also serve two other purposes. First, correcting them makes gun owners look and sound like nitpicky dweebs, who fuss over things that ultimately don’t matter. (If you’re convinced that Guns Are Bad, then getting the name wrong for a part of a gun is down in the noise.)

Second, correcting the media’s errors puts gun owners in the position of responding to the media’s initiative. And that is always the weaker position.

Make no mistake, gun ownership is on the receiving end of a full-court-press from the dominant culture outlets.

Bob, why didn’t you plug your appearance on the Dana Show? I’ve been reading your blog for sometime now and listening to her program for much longer. I enjoy her show more than any of the national programs. I’m sure many of your other readers who are unaware of her program would have taken a flier on it to hear your interview. I enjoyed your interview and your posts, keep up the food work.